How Ethan Rasiel Leveraged His Journalism Skills to Build a Successful PR Agency

[00:00:02] Hector: Hello and welcome to another episode of the how to scale a business podcast. My name is Hector Santhia Esteban and I am your host. And today our special guest is Ethan Raziel. He is the CEO and founder at Lightspeed PR and we might get into PR and talk that a little bit. But one of the big questions that we were talking about before we hit the recording button is should businesses actually scale?

[00:00:23] Hector: we're gonna tackle all of those questions. But Ethan, thanks so much for hanging out with us today. Appreciate the time.

[00:00:29] Ethan: Yeah, it's good to be with you, Hector. And by the way I am one of the two founders at AccalFoundr who's been instrumental in everything we've done. So I wanted to make sure to credit Amanda as the AccalFoundr too.

[00:00:39] Hector: appreciate that. I think you're actually the first guest to actually credit any of their co founders on the on the podcast. So I appreciate that. Give us the story. PR is something that I've always, it's always been that black box for me. I never really understood it.

[00:00:55] Hector: I've read all the books and then still came out of it going I don't know how that, I'm excited because it's never something I've been able to put, my really my finger on. So tell us how you got into the PR space and then, what you've been building and what you guys are up to now with your clients.

[00:01:07] Ethan: Yeah, sure. funny that you mentioned that PR is a black box, cause that's how we like it. It's intended to be behind the scenes, it's most effective. It's different from advertising. When you see an ad, you know, you watch a TV commercial. Or an interstitial in your video or whatever, you're like, I'm seeing it at everybody knows that, but the results of P we really want that to seem more organic and genuine.

[00:01:30] Ethan: If you read, you pick up the newspaper and read an article, it probably was a PR person, but that's not something that's obvious. Or if you watch a news segment on TV. If it's good news, it's probably a PR person who put it there. Those human interest stories at the end of every segment of every news show that's PR driven.

[00:01:48] Ethan: But we like to keep that behind the scenes. So that's why most people think that PR is just Puerto Rico, that's just the people that have no idea what it even is. And that's one of the things that I enjoy about it. I'll give you the short answer into it.

[00:02:02] Ethan: I was originally a news reporter. I studied journalism in college and. One of the things that they taught me in college was news reporters wait for things to happen and then they write it down. The PR people were the ones who make things happen. We create the news. that was more exciting to me.

[00:02:19] Ethan: And so that's what we've been doing. Lightspeed is, we're 10 years in. We started in 2013. And it's been quite a ride.

[00:02:26] Hector: Yeah, I don't know if you've read the book. It's called Trust me. I'm lying by Ryan Holiday.

[00:02:31] Hector: he really tries to bring an expose, if you will, to the PR industry in the sense of what you're saying and the things that look organic, oftentimes Are not as organic as they seem, because there's someone who's brilliant like you, making things happen. So would love to take this, just because I'm selfishly curious about PR you. Are there businesses, brands, products, services that lend themselves well to what you do? And are there businesses that

[00:02:57] Hector: Should maybe not like, is what you do good for any type of business? Are there people that should maybe focus more on marketing and sales and whatever is it at a stage where now all of a sudden PR is important because a lot of our listeners. They're at a stage in their business where they've started to figure some things out and I'd imagine it could be a shiny object to them, or perhaps it's actually the channel that maybe they should pursue sooner than later.

[00:03:21] Hector: So how do you help businesses navigate when and? What is the right type of approach?

[00:03:27] Ethan: That's a really smart and insightful question. So thanks for asking that. It's actually something that we think about a lot. Really, is PR for everybody? And the answer is, as you alluded to, it's not really for everybody. Not for every company. And I'll give you maybe two or three filters that companies can use to determine if PR is for them or isn't for them that are pretty simple.

[00:03:48] Ethan: The first one Is do you have a good story to tell really what we're doing with PR the core at the core is earned media and what we mean by earned media is it's not advertising paying for the result I'm literally calling up an editor or TV producer or radio host and say, Hey, my client's doing this really cool thing.

[00:04:11] Ethan: You should have them on as a guest. And I need to be able to tell that story in about 10 seconds to even get the interest. And if a company is doing something that's Generic or that's okay. This is not a judgment, right? I'm not here to criticize anything. But if you're doing something that's innovative and unusual, you're a good candidate for PR.

[00:04:33] Ethan: If you're doing something that a lot of entrepreneurs are also doing, then maybe it's going to be harder for me to tell that story because it's not unusual. It's got to have something different. And that's the first thing. Is to really have something different or unusual. The other thing, I guess I'll leave it at just these two.

[00:04:51] Ethan: The other thing that really makes a company good candidate for PR is patience. If you need results tomorrow, then I'm not your guy. The company is called Lightspeed PR, and we do move fast, but It's not truly at lightspeed. Advertising is faster. You can buy an ad tomorrow, and now you're in the newspaper.

[00:05:11] Ethan: You can buy a TV commercial, and now you're on TV. You can buy a a YouTube ad, and now you're on YouTube. But going through PR takes a lot longer, the results are more powerful because they're at least appear to be more organic. It's not an obvious paid placement, but it takes longer to convince and coerce and get people to do it.

[00:05:33] Ethan: And you need to have a couple of months to play with. So if you have a unique story and a little bit of patience, then PR can be great for you.

[00:05:40] Hector: Do you have any favorite examples, whether it's from your own clients or even just, classic PR examples that show either a good story or, either of those two really, the patients part of it, maybe where things paid off a little later than maybe what is anticipated.

[00:05:56] Hector: So

[00:05:57] Ethan: Yeah, it happens. All the time. there's so many that I could talk about, but I'll give you one. of our clients is called Carbon Title. So they make a platform that helps real estate developers and real estate owners their carbon footprint. It's like the nutrition label on the back of a candy bar in front of a building.

[00:06:17] Ethan: How much smoke is coming out of here? the first few months were really all about figuring out how we tell the story and who do we tell the story to and how do we make it simple? it was a very complex kind of esoteric technology and we had to really drill down to the core of it. And once we were able to do that. we got the media super excited, and then we were got them in this company and Associated Press and some really media. It took a few months to get to that point, but the client much of their credit, they stayed with us as we went through our process, and then it paid off. And now they're everywhere.

[00:06:53] Ethan: So you can check out carbon title Google that and see if you're interested in that, but that's just one example of just, you have to go through the process, you have to just faith in the process and it will work.

[00:07:03] Hector: for that company who they're going dang, I don't really have a story, or at least perhaps is it that They don't have a story. They think they don't have one. They haven't discovered it. Are you of the mind that everybody's got a story like, and it's just got to be unveiled?

[00:07:16] Hector: Or is it that people really just have a, a boring company for lack of a better term? And they've got to find some sort of way to differentiate it. If someone is sitting there and just playing devil's advocate and they're saying, yeah I'm gonna turn this off because, we're boring.

[00:07:28] Hector: We're pretty standard. We're a commodity. Is there hope for someone like that, and I don't even know if hope is the right word, but is there a possibility for someone like that to create or find something within their company?

[00:07:40] Ethan: Yeah. That's another good question. There is hope and a lot of clients that call us. they know they have a story or they hope they have a story, but they don't know exactly what it is. And so that's one of the first things that they do. If you look at my website, we say that we're translators and a lot of them, we specialize in the technology space but this would apply to any PR firm where you're taking something that the people who work there, this is the thing.

[00:08:05] Ethan: If you started a company, you're living and breathing it all day long and you're immersed in it. And it's very hard to see how others. Perceive you and that's where kind of we come in and we look at you as the outside world would and then create a story that would appeal to them and look like I said, there are some companies where we're never going to be able to come up with.

[00:08:29] Ethan: That story, but usually we can most companies have some hope it could be a human, interest something in their background. We had a guy, he's a cancer survivor. That was the hook. Other companies are more what the customer stories are. But sometimes, Transcribed by https: otter.

[00:08:47] Ethan: ai it doesn't work every time. And then we tell them, look, PR is not a good fit for you. But usually we can figure something out.

[00:08:53] Hector: Yeah, I think it's such a testament to, what happens a lot of businesses when they start to figure something out and now they've figured it out, but then they look up and they realize that they're the same. now they've got to differentiate themselves. I think that's the next logical step for a lot of businesses.

[00:09:12] Hector: Once they found product market fit or, they've started to dial in some of their fulfillment, maybe it's their sales and marketing when we get back from break though, Ethan, you brought up an interesting question before we even before we hit record. And that's should businesses

[00:09:26] Hector: Even scale. And I know you've had some interesting experiences and your own perspective on that. And so when we get back from break, we're going to talk about, whether or not businesses should sail and how to answer that question and some of the things that come after that.

[00:09:39] Hector: So stick around, y'all. We'll get into that right after this quick break.

[00:09:41] Hector:

[00:09:43] Hector: Hey, y'all. Thanks for sticking around today. Today's episode is brought to you by amplify media, and we are a podcast and content creation company. And so chances are, if you have a passion, a purpose, a mission, a message, something that you want to get out to the world, you don't necessarily have the time, the team or the tech skills to be able to do it.

[00:09:58] Hector: We can help go to amplify media dot com. That's A. M. P. L. A. F. Y. Media dot com. You can also check the show notes for info. And with that, let's get back to today's episode.

[00:10:09] Hector: And we are back with Ethan Raziel. Did I get that?

[00:10:13] Ethan: Perfect, doctor.

[00:10:15] Hector: For you listeners takes a lot of practice. So even when we, uh. went to break. We talked about question, and it's a question that we haven't tackled on the show. And that's should a business actually scale? would presume that if someone is listening to this show that they've already decided that was the solution or the right answer.

[00:10:30] Hector: But perhaps have different point of view. So what are your thoughts on whether or not scaling always the answer? Or if there's times where perhaps a business shouldn't You know, look to scale.

[00:10:41] Ethan: Yeah it's a really good question. When you presented me with your theme is how to scale a business, and I guess that's my personality, but I think about wait a second maybe you shouldn't. have a general kind of premise, we have to be like a shark and we always have to move forward and certainly if you're a large company, investors will assess growth, right?

[00:11:03] Ethan: What is your growth? That's scaling growth. It's all the same thing. most businesses should grow, but not every business should grow or scale. in my world, in the world of PR, that's the very premise of PR public relations. It's about relationships. And it's not a manufacturing a product where you can increase your production and let's speed up the assembly line and let's make more of these widgets, right? Can you scale relationships the same way that you scale a physical product or make more automobiles and in the world of marketing or in the world of PR in a lot of areas maybe scaling isn't. Actually what you want. So my advice would be to think about what's your goal is your goal to eventually sell your company or get an investor or go public or do an IPO.

[00:11:53] Ethan: Maybe scaling is what you want is your goal to have just to make a comfortable living. You may be able to make a comfortable living by reaching a certain size and staying there. And you make a good salary and be your own boss as an entrepreneur without the pressure of always trying to scale and always trying to grow.

[00:12:10] Ethan: It might just actually not be necessary. If you've reached a certain point where you know that you're getting out what you need. there can be a downside. And this was something that. We're 10 years in, and we've had years where we've grown and years where we've shrunk and years where we've flatlined.

[00:12:26] Ethan: We're in a growth mode right now, but it's not always that way. And one of the things that I learned in our world is that have to be careful to not scale too fast. don't want to damage what you own. You don't want to damage your brand. The Lightspeed brand is built on smart PR and good relationships.

[00:12:44] Ethan: And I have a team underneath me, it's not all me, we have a great team at Lightspeed, we have more than 20 people now, but each one of those people has to get up to a certain standard before they can do things the Lightspeed way, and if we try to do it, you can't rush that. So I'll pause there, but bottom line is think about your goals and think about how quickly you really can scale without damaging what you've already done.

[00:13:06] Hector: Yeah. There's always the not that we live in a world necessarily of finite but I do think that we have choices, right? And so we have to decide where we're going to allocate our resources, where we're going to allocate our focus and time and the progression of those things is important.

[00:13:21] Hector: I think that there's all of the. things about burnout on an individual level and then, customer retention and all the things that kind of happen at scale that come along with just being a bigger company. an important question answer. When you think about, your guys's journey, you mentioned being up down flat.

[00:13:37] Hector: But now you're in a place of, growthI would imagine a lot of listeners, they hear that and they go, Oh, wow, I didn't know that's what real business was like.I saw the charts and thought that a successful business did this. And then the next year they did more in the next year.

[00:13:49] Hector: They did even more. And that's how, like the stat line, that's how the trajectory went. So yeah. Whether it was a, something personally that kept you going, or whether it was, something Systemically or culturally or whatever someone who's in the midst of that Maybe they're in one of those flat years or down years where they're thinking.

[00:14:05] Hector: Oh goodness. Is this gonna work? is this something that can work? How would you help them navigate something like that?

[00:14:11] Ethan: I'll pass on the best advice that I was given and that is to just be conscious as an entrepreneur, how you're spending your time and the way that I did it was I do a chart, so a quadrant or squares, right? And you fill out the quadrant. And the horizontal is am I good at it or am I not good at it?

[00:14:32] Ethan: And then individual tasks. So there's stuff you're good at and stuff you're not good at, right? And then the vertical is, do I like it or do I not like it? And everything will then go into one of those four squares. You could be good at something and you like it. Or you could like it, doing it, but you're not that good at it.

[00:14:48] Ethan: Or the other way around, you could be really good at something, butyou don't like it. And then there's stuff that you don't like and you're bad at doing it. So there's four squares. And what you have to figure out is, how are you spending, put a percentage on me. So how much time am I spending on each of those four squares?

[00:15:04] Ethan: Andthe thing is to overcome human nature, because what we do is actually often counterintuitive to human nature. What I mean by that is. Being leader of an organization requires you to do stuff that you don't like. And human nature is to do stuff that we like all the time. And I realized that as I looked at my chart I was doing what everybody does.

[00:15:25] Ethan: I was gravitating towards the stuff that I enjoyed. bUt it wasn't the stuff that I was best at. And the way to be successful is to focus more on what you're good at and not so much on just what's fun. And it seems obvious when you say it, but you have to really do a deep dive and really be conscious of each and every minute, how you're spending your time.

[00:15:44] Ethan: The time is the most valuable thing that you have. And so if you're spending time on stuff, that's fun, but Not moving the needle or that you're not as good at stop doing it. So that's the first thing I would say is just be thoughtful about where your time is going and whether it's right for the business.

[00:15:59] Hector: Yeah, that's great advice and such timely impression advice, too. Perhaps there's a lot of listeners out there thinking, Oh yeah, that's me. But that is me. And I think that the advantage of being an entrepreneur, and especially the CEO, The founder who, you get to choose who does what.

[00:16:13] Hector: you get first pick essentially, if you will. And I'm realizing that to a detriment to, you fill up your time with the things that you like, and there's not enough time for the things that need to get done. that is worth the entire price of today's episode, ladies and gentlemen.

[00:16:28] Hector: Is there anything else, Ethan that, we've covered a wide range, I love where this conversation went and these conversations go exactly where they're supposed to go, but is there anywhere else that you think we should hit on today or anything that else that's relevant to today's conversation that you haven't had a chance to get in?

[00:16:43] Ethan: there are a couple things that I think want to of expand a little bit on what you just mentioned, about delegating. Hector, you said, as the CEO, you get to decide what things you're going to do yourself and what things to hand off. And I'm going to share with you and with all your listeners. One tool that someone told me about we'll call him Robert because that's his name. There's a tool called Loom. Hector, do you know about Loom?

[00:17:05] Hector: the video recording.

[00:17:06] Ethan: Yeah. Video recording. You've used it. For those who don't know I'm sure there's some listeners who might not know about it, but yeah, Loom is just video recording stuff.

[00:17:14] Ethan: You just click and it records you as well as your screen. So I use it. I can't tell you how helpful it's been in running my business. Once I discovered, because what I used to do was if I wanted to teach somebody something, I would. Pick up the phone or, do a zoom call and explain it. And then I was explaining the same stuff over and over again. Or I would try, and then I was like, you know what? I'm tired of explaining all this stuff over and over again. Let me just write a manual. And then I would write this detailed, like instructions. Here are the instructions. Read this. Turns out people don't process information very well by reading a very long thing.

[00:17:48] Ethan: And it's also impersonal, and it's really easy for somebody to steal and use for the company. So with a loom, we avoid all that. So every time I'm like explaining to somebody I do something, in case, like, how do I make a press release? Or how do I call a reporter? Or some of the basic stuff that we have to do, or even some of the technical things that I might explain when I set up a new account.

[00:18:13] Ethan: Whatever it is. I record it as a loom and then I send it out. And then I have a library. I have more than, I think I have 50 or 60 of these videos now and everyone on the team has access to all of them. And if I have a question, I'm like, look at the loon library and half the time their questions are answered and then they're getting me explaining it just like I would have if I called them, but I don't have to spend any more time.

[00:18:37] Ethan: I just do it once and then it's just infinitely repeated. And then I use it with clients. So clients. Sometimes they may say, Hey, Ethan what do you think of this press release? Or what do you think of this website? What I would do in the past is I would type this long email, I think of this and this, and then they would have to read this.

[00:18:54] Ethan: Now, I just record my feedback and I can highlight things, and it works so much better. It's obvious to you, Hector, but your readers might not have known about that. Check out Loom, it's really easy to use, it plugs right in. That's one of those tools that I would recommend everybody checks out.

[00:19:12] Hector: Yeah, so powerful. And I'm looking on my desktop in here. It's one of the icons. And as you said that I just forgot how there's that curse of knowledge you don't realize what you know. And that what seems so simple to you is, such, so powerful and such great information for other people.

[00:19:29] Hector: And I think that's one of them. And especially in a remote work setting or in a, whatever it's called, a where people are not working in the same office together, the ability to be able to give those instructions is so huge.

[00:19:41] Ethan: helpful. And you are, I'm in my home office, but it's just me. it's actually been a real challenge for us. We've been virtual since day one, way before COVID. Lightspeed's always been a virtual environment. And so as we brought in new team members, our candidates be like, look, let me let me just show you how to do this.

[00:19:56] Ethan: no one here. This technology, thank goodness that it exists. When we started the company, we weren't even doing zoom in 2013. It was conference calls for everything. And the technology has not come up to the point where it's super helpful. And I'll give you one other kind of recommendation and that's about training for scalability that we've learned the hard way that training is not just for employees.

[00:20:20] Ethan: Training is for customers. and this would apply to, whatever business you're in. Whatever you do, your customers are not the experts that you are. They've known that they have a need to hire you to do something or to buy something from you, but you're the experts and in our case, it's with PR.

[00:20:36] Ethan: And what we realized was our clients didn't really. Like you said at the beginning, Hector, it's like a black box. It's especially true in PR. Clients knew that they needed PR, but they didn't really know what it was, or what we did or what they needed to do to support the process, what their role was.

[00:20:52] Ethan: And what we realized a couple years, and we've just been doing this for a couple years now, we have a client training program. So we're teaching our clients what PR is. And we have a 101 and a 201, so it's like a class. we're teaching clients like, is this gave you like a quick overview at the beginning, but it's a deeper dive.

[00:21:11] Ethan: And then we're explaining what are common causes of failure and what do we need from you, the client, on a daily basis to succeed. And here's all the things that we need from our clients. So they know that it's not just that they're writing a check, that they need to be involved in the process. And since we've been training clients, I wasn't even honestly sure that they would be up for they may say no, they may not even admit that they need it. It turns out that when we've offered this training to our clients they're in, I think one person said, no, cause they're too busy. 95 percent of the case, they're like 99%. They're like, that's awesome.

[00:21:49] Ethan: Yes, I need this training. And I also was worried. Maybe they'll think that they can like then replace us. No, it's not about that. it's about how to use us better. It's like when you get a car, you need to take your road, your driver's ed, right? It's like a driver's ed for how to use a PR file. It's an instruction manual.

[00:22:07] Hector: there's so many conversations where I have with our operation or head of operations, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For our podcast production, unit and so much of them is his frustration with the clients, right? And why can't they do this? And why can't they do this? And what I'm saying is that although that we try and not retroactively, but after the fact, we go back and say, it would be really nice if you could do this.

[00:22:29] Hector: If you can all of a sudden start building those things into a training process or into a training program where you can get ahead of it, you can start to create better habits or create better whatever. you're a service based in, company, it can always be easier on you. The client can always make things better or more effective or whatever. And so that can be instead of complaining, which is what we do and saying, All right, Kevin, it's gonna be okay. tO actually be proactive in the situation. I think that's a really good way to do it.

[00:22:58] Ethan: It really works, and I would encourage everybody who's listened to this to think about, train your customers, whoever, everybody has customers of some kind teach them how to be better customers. They don't know, here's the thing, whatever you do that all day long, your customer isn't a customer all day. They're only a customer 10 percent of the time, the other 90 percent of the time they're doing other stuff. So they're not spending as much time being a customer as you are being a provider You've got 10 times as much at least 10x the time to do it as they are So you got to close that gap and bring them up to the same level By training them now without spending as much time now, they're speaking the same language now whatever you're doing graphic design legal, whatever you're doing I wish all my Vendors trained me, i'm not talking about a youtube video.

[00:23:46] Ethan: I'm talking about live Real instruction. You can't replace it.

[00:23:50] Hector: Even maybe we're gonna have to come back and have you come back and talk about that whole thing, because that's worth its own episode. But

[00:23:56] Ethan: could be an episode right there.

[00:23:57] Hector: Where can people go and get more connected with you or find out more about what you guys do?

[00:24:02] Ethan: Yeah. Go to my website lightspeedpr. com. And we've got actually my co founder, Amanda, just finished writing a book it's called PR confidential, it's like revealing the secrets of PR and you can pre order that it's going to come out in the fall, I think September. So if you go to Amazon and you type the words PR confidential.

[00:24:22] Ethan: The pre order page for the ebook will come right up. anD we've also got an ebook on our website. That's free. That's when PR goes wrong How to keep it from happening to you because like I said at the beginning like PR might not be for you so this ebook actually has a Questionnaire an interactive questionnaire and you can answer some questions and it will assess If you're a good fit for PR, so check it out.

[00:24:44] Ethan: That's all at lightspeedpr. com.

[00:24:46] Hector: Yeah, I'll go get connected with Ethan. This has been a fantastically valuable conversation for me. I'm sure if you made it here, it's been the same for you. We would love a rating or review wherever you get your podcast. And if you know someone who is in the midst of scaling their business or could use a benefit from PR and wants to get off on the right foot, please send them this episode and wherever you're at, wherever you're getting this, thank you for letting us be a part of your entrepreneurial journey.

[00:25:11] Hector: We'll see on the next one. Later, y'all.